War Comes to Manchester

Manchester's capture on June 27, 1863, put Union troops in Bragg's rear, and the town at once became a launching point. The next day John Wilder's mounted brigade rode south from here to break the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad. At the rain-swollen Elk River the men took apart a mill and built a raft to float their howitzers across, then beat a small garrison at Decherd, tore up 300 yards of track and burned a depot full of Confederate rations. They pushed on to Sewanee and were back in Manchester by noon on June 30 without losing a man.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Stone Fort State Archaeological Park — 0.9 mi
  A 2,000-year-old enclosure of piled stone and earth on the bluffs above the forks of the Duck River, built by Native people between about 80 and 550 A.D., with a museum and waterfall trails.
• Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration — 20 mi
  The Shelbyville show grounds where the Tennessee Walking Horse has been crowned world grand champion each late summer since 1939, and where the practice of soring is part of the story.
• Tims Ford State Park — 21 mi
  A lake park on the Elk River below the Cumberland Plateau, made by a 1970 TVA dam on land the Cherokee and Chickasaw ceded by treaty in the early 1800s.
• Jack Daniel Distillery — 21 mi
  The oldest registered distillery in the United States, in a limestone hollow outside Lynchburg, where the tour now names Nathan Nearest Green, an enslaved man, as the first master distiller.

More markers nearby

• Experiment in Armor — 0.3 mi
• General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold — 5.5 mi
• Fortress Tullahoma — 11 mi
• Camp Forrest — 11 mi